


no season knows, nor clime

by forochel



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bakery, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-02
Updated: 2010-03-02
Packaged: 2017-11-02 23:07:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/374378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forochel/pseuds/forochel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>in which nate is a maître pâtissier, walt is his apprentice, brad is nate's hot engineering professor partner, and ray is an engineering student</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

One could say that the catalyst for Ray intensifying his efforts on the Hasser front happened on the day Brad actually summoned Ray to his office after a class for actual official reasons, and that it was this exchange:

"Mr. Person," Brad said, looking serious.

Ray, being Ray, lounged back in his chair and said, "Yeah, sir?"

Brad sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"What?" asked Ray, sounding for all the world as though he were the one outrageously wronged by a horde of raping and pillaging pirates.

"Ray," said Brad, very long-suffering, "I'm pleased to inform you that you will be out of my hair for the better half of next year."

"...What?" Ray repeated, far more sober and slightly spooked, dark eyes wide in his pale, narrow face.

Brad sighed again. "Ray, I realise that you spend more time than is strictly desirable high on questionable substances, but do you _at all_ remember applying for an exchange programme in the last semester?"

Ray blinked. "Oh, yeah. That. Oh. _Oh_. Dude! What about Walt?"

 

///

 

Rather like the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the day Ray walked into Nate's pâtisserie with Brad, mid-ridiculous rant, and Walt had laughed at something truly unfunny that Ray had said was the shot that started Ray Person's long-ass war of attrition on Walt Hasser's Israel. To mix historical metaphors.

Walt laughing - the only time, really, Ray had ever seen Walt laugh like that, his face all lit up and relaxed - had naturally focussed Ray's attention on him, as well as Brad's, who had drawled in the way that meant the hard-to-get affection from him, "My estimation of your sense of humour has just gone down a couple of notches, Walt."

The boy had looked up at Brad and grinned good-naturedly, "It's okay if you're too old to understand, Brad."

Brad had raised his eyes to the heavens and asked Nate, "How have your standards dropped so far that you would hire such apprentices?"

Ray would have, at a time, ribbed them silly about the old-married-couple banter that Brad and Nate had started volleying back and forth across the shop, but he'd been busy watching Walt watch them fondly. And then the boy'd run his tongue absently over his lips and Ray was gone, just like that. Unfortunately, apparently when Ray fell _incontrovertibly_ in love with someone he got a predatory gleam in his eye, as according to Nate, who had been standing next to Walt, showing him how to ice cakes neatly. It was supposed to explain why Walt had decided to take off into the back room and hide in there for the remainder of Ray's visit to the shop.

Ray had, at the time, called bullshit, but now - now he was willing to take any theory that would aid him in his campaign to Win Walt Hasser's Heart (and Also Get Into His Pants). Especially with only a couple of months left to go before he had to declare a ceasefire, which would undoubtedly be catastrophic towards the great advances he had made in the past two years.

 

///

 

The surge in Ray's efforts did not go unnoticed. To be perfectly fair, only someone deeply oblivious and also deaf, dumb, and blind would not notice the way Ray made it a point to spend at least an hour in the pâtisserie talking at Walt, who would on good days make a comment or two, and on bad days, retreat into the sanctuary of the back room, which Ray was informed was actually three rooms: the kitchen, the cool room, and the actual back room that served as both office and break room.

"Walt," Nate tried, on one rainy afternoon when he knew Walt couldn't possibly say he had to go for a walk, not when the rain was torrential and relentlessly sluicing down the glass windows that fronted the shop.

"Yes, sir?" Walt replied, because he was unfailingly polite no matter how much Nate tried to talk him out of it.

"Has there been anything bothering you lately?"

"N-not particularly," said Walt, who was, amazingly enough, a worse liar than Nate. The tensing up of his shoulders said it all.

Nate sighed internally and glazed a few tart shells with apricot-whiskey jam that Walt had made the day before. Quite talented, the lad, if a bit slow in non-pastry related areas. Or maybe just Ray-Person-related areas.

"What I meant to ask, Walt," said Nate kindly, "is if Ray has been bothering you."

Walt looked up, startled, from his packaging of a tin of cookies for a tiny girl barely visible over the counter, and her mother.

"Not at all!" said Walt, eyes wide and slightly panicked.

"Because if he _has_ , I could easily tell Brad to tell him to lay off," Nate pressed on, feeling slightly bad, but the tension that filled the pâtisserie whenever Ray came in was bad for the pastry.

Walt leaned over the counter to deposit the tin carefully in the little girl's arms and smiled at the mother, who was clearly very charmed, so much so that she didn't even grimace when Walt rang up the bill, and handed over her credit card with a smile for Walt. Walt, Nate thought contentedly to himself, was good for business. But there were pressing matters at hand here. Like the fact that Walt was clearly evading the question by giving excellent customer service.

"Tank 'oo!" lisped the little girl; Walt sort of melted and gave a helpless little wave as her mother walked her out of the shop, the bells hanging over the door tinkling as the door swung open and shut. Tinkles of _doom_ , Walt thought.

"It's all right," he said, and started the second cup of cappucino for Rudy, the district officer who liked dropping in for a coffee break every afternoon.

Nate narrowed his eyes and briefly contemplated asking Walt if it being all right meant he liked it. But no one, not even Walt, could possibly like being harangued by Ray on a daily basis. Sighing, Nate gave up and decided to show Walt how to do macaroons.

 

///

 

"We really shouldn't be doing this - ah - here," Nate gasped as Brad stripped his shirt off and mouthed at his neck.

"Why not?" Brad asked, nipping lightly at the skin stretched over Nate's collarbones as his hands roamed lower, pulling Nate's hips closer to himself, luxuriating in the way they jerked reflexively against him.

"Because," Nate said, clutching at Brad's shoulders and tipping his head back to allow Brad better access, "The door is unlocked."

At which point said door swung open, and Walt came clattering into the room.

"Oh, fuck," Nate breathed, partly because Brad's hand was still _there_ , and partly because he did not approve of traumatising his apprentice for reasons both emotional and professional; Walt had a tendency to overwhip cream when distressed.

Walt stared at them like a deer caught in the headlights. They stared back at him, Brad doing his best "why are you even here" stare of loftiness, despite their state of déshabillé.

"I, um," Walt swallowed nervously, "Left my - I'll go. I'll go. Bye!"

The door slammed shut behind the boy as he bolted out into the great good night.

Nate groaned and buried his face in Brad's shoulder. "He's never going to forgive me. And he's also never going to be able to sit down in this room ever again."

Brad shook with laughter as he swept a hand soothingly up and down Nate's back and said, "Think about it this way: Ray can bond with him over this. Now, where were we?"

Any protestations that Nate might have had (doubtful), he was rapidly distracted from.

 

///

 

"The most amazing thing," Ray said the next day, while casually leaning on the service counter, arm propped up against it and legs crossed in the very image of one who is cool and calm and not at all vaguely nervous about talking to his most favourite person ever, "is that it's taken you _three years_ to walk in on them."

Walt gave him a pained look.

"I mean, they're totally epically prolific, y'know? I can't even count how many times I've seen things no human being should be allowed to see because Brad doesn't think it necessary to lock his office door."

"Stop harassing my apprentice when he's trying to make sure our accounts are in order, Ray," Nate ordered from where he was arranging profiteroles and macaroons artistically on a tea tray.

"Does that mean I can harass him when he isn't doing maths, then?" Ray flicked a grin at Walt, who had managed to turn a very fetching shade of red; the strip of skin visible between his hairline and the crisply starched collar of his white shirt flushed pink as he bent over the ledgers.

" _Ray_ ," Nate said warningly.

Ray ignored him and carried on blithely, "So, let me take you out for a therapeutic coffee."

Silence greeted his words. Nate held his breath.

"Please?" Ray added.

Walt finally looked up from the book he had had his nose buried in and blinked at Ray. Ray would have called it coquettish, except that he'd die of happiness if Walt deigned to be coquettish at him, instead of this - whatever this was.

"Nine's too late for coffee," said Walt, to Ray's mystification.

"The shop closes at nine," Nate put in helpfully.

"Right," said Ray, staring intensely at Walt, "Does that mean you don't get breaks? Because that's exploitative."

Walt hesitated, before breaking the staring contest they'd had going on to look at Nate, who smiled his impartial smile at them. He looked back down at his book and closed it, marking his place with a pen; Ray's spirits rose very slightly, only to be smashed again when Walt smiled apologetically and said, "Sorry, I still have this week's transactions to go," before disappearing into the back room, as was his wont whenever Ray pushed too far.

"God _damn_ , Nate," Ray said dismally, "Why is he like that?"

Nate gave him a sympathetic smile.

"You _are_ quite overwhelming, Ray," he said, and gave him a free cream puff.

 

///

 

Ray, being Brad's protege, a fact that Brad was understandably loathe to make publicly known, felt completely entitled to dropping in on Brad unannounced during office hours, as he was doing right now.

"Brad," said Ray sadly, "Why does he keep on running away from me?"

"Because you're a freak of nature," Brad said promptly.

"Your _mother_ is a freak of nature."

"You shouldn't insult your font of wisdom, Ray."

"Hit me with the wisdom, then, because it hasn't been forthcoming and I am going to _die_ of a broken heart _and_ blue-balls if this goes on any longer."

"Tell him to stop running away from you, then," said Brad, unimpressed, as he typed away at his computer.

"Are you kidding me?!" Ray said, sitting up from where he had been insouciantly lounging sideways across one of the uncomfortable chairs in Brad's office. "He'd probably hide from work, and then Nate would kill me. With a rolling pin."

Looking briefly up from his work, Brad said succinctly, "You pussy."

"No, Brad," said Ray, "Walt's like a small woodland creature. You've got to lure him in, or else he'll take fright and, like, run away. And then where would I be?"

"I think your problem lies in the way you're visualising this, Ray. Also, you're taking up precious office hours. Get out."

"Fuck, Iceman, no one dares come into your office anyway," Ray whined, using the nickname that Brad knew for a fact the student populace had in the time they could have better spent improving their minds pulled out of their asses and would never, unless your name was Ray Person, use to his face.

"Other than you, my little infection." Brad pointed out drily.

Ray perked up, in one of those unsettling mood changes, and grinned at him. "You know you love me."

"Yes, Ray," Brad said, "But does Walt?"

He smirked as Ray sank back down into his slouch and pouted.

"Get out of my office and go harass some freshmen if you don't have anything better to do."

 

///

 

It was sometime before the Christmas holiday, and while Ray was recovering from the drinking festivities that usually accompanied the end of the term (though to be fair, of course, drinking was to be had easily during the term as well) in the soothing warmth of the pâtisserie, that Poland fell to Ray's Germany, except that Ray totally didn't hate Jews, his favourite Professor being one and all.

"I'm leaving for a couple of months," Ray announced, as if to the pâtisserie-at-large when, really, everyone knew that he was talking to Walt. His eyes were certainly fixed on Walt, who was looking stricken, and also concentrating steadfastly down at the dough in his fingers. And Brad thought he and Nate had been emotionally constipated. Nate, blessed man of great tact, sensitivity, and also excellent blowjob skills, cleared his throat and nudged Walt behind the marble-top counter.

"Oh!" Walt yelped, and then flushed with embarrassment as he looked up and met Ray's eyes involuntarily. His skin, Brad decided, was crawling, and he was going to spend a few cleansing hours of good, clean coding once this was over. Nate, on the other hand, was looking indulgent and fond, even as it seemed all Ray and Walt were going to do was look at each other like a bunch of pussies.

"Um," said Walt, "what for?"

Jesus Christ, thought Brad, it was like being back to square one again.

"Exchange programme to Cambridge," Ray said.

Walt furrowed his eyebrows and Brad could see Ray sort of liquidating on the inside. "In Massachusetts?"

"Uh," hesitated Ray, "No, the UK."

Walt looked back down at his pastry crust, and started rolling it out absently. He looked back up after a pause that was starting to be too indecently long for its own good, and said quietly, "Oh, congratulations."

"Thanks," said Ray awkwardly, because Brad knew for a fact that he probably had a few dissertations all stored up in the back of his throat, just waiting to be said to Walt, and Ray was swallowing it all down because Walt, apparently, was _magical like that_. It was all immensely frustrating, in any case, the way they were dancing around each other. Even Nate was starting to look vaguely frustrated, as he filled a tray-full of choux pastries with custard.

"Stay safe," Walt added abruptly, lining a few baking tins with the dough carefully, "Don't get drunk all the time." And then, picking up the tins, he glanced up shyly to give Ray a quick smile before hurrying away to chill the pastry shells in the cool room.

Ray exhaled, long and long-suffering, when the door swung shut behind Walt.

"Yep," said Brad dryly, "Just like day one."

Nate shot him a disapproving look and gave Ray a sympathetic smile. He said, "I'm sure you'll get there eventually," before following Walt into the room.

"Don't worry, brother," said Rudy, who had been observing the little drama beatifically over his cup of cappuccino and newspaper on the other side of the shop, "All things will come to pass." Having given Ray his absolutely useless bit of Zen advice, Rudy went back to his crossword.

 

///

 

Ray had spent the last half an hour freezing slowly against the brick wall that the back door of the pâtisserie faced, waiting as he was for Walt to finish doing whatever it was apprentices did when a pâtisserie closed and their masters retired for the night. He huddled further into the collar of his leather jacket, grateful for once for the hole it had burnt in his pocket. Watching his breath hang in the air got boring after a while; fleetingly, Ray thought of lighting up, but dismissed the idea at the thought of that unconscious wrinkle of Walt's nose whenever he walked into the shop smelling of cigarette smoke. The things Ray did for eternally-floury pâtissier apprentices.

He'd almost fallen asleep standing up when the back door swung upon, and Walt emerged, his face half-buried in an enormous, woolly scarf that Ray faintly remembered Walt's mother had sent him. Biting down on a smile, Ray peeled away from the wall, stepping into the pool of yellow-warm light spilling out from the doorway and said, "Hey."

Walt jumped and cursed; Ray couldn't suppress his grin.

"Hi," Walt said weakly, and half-raised a hand in Ray's direction.

"Yeah, hi," Ray echoed, "hey, you cold?"

"Not yet," said Walt wryly. "You look cold, though."

"Yes, well." Ray shrugged, and smiled winningly at Walt, who frowned down at him.

"Have you been out here long?"

"Not really. I just wanted to talk to you?"

"I would've let you in," Walt said, looking reproachful.

Ray blinked, his heart stuttering. "I wanted all of your attention. Want."

Cracking a smile at that, Walt mumbled something, eyes locked on something over Ray's left ear. Ray cheered madly inside. Outwardly, he tried very hard not to do something ridiculous like hug the everlasting fuck out of Walt and said, "Sorry?"

"Where'd you want to go?" Walt asked, quite clearly lying through his teeth.

"I was thinking of the park," Ray said, letting it go, "but well, now I'm thinking somewhere warm. And with food."

Tilting his body back towards the still-open doorway, Walt said, "I can make you something?"

Ray looked at him with mock-horror. "Are you _kidding_? Nate lives in there! _With Brad_."

Walt looked briefly horrified as well. He shut the door and locked it firmly.

"Okay. There's the sandwich shop two streets over," Walt suggested, his voice lilting up in a question.

Ray inclined his head, and started walking and talking, just to fill in the silence that hung thick and expectant in the air.

"You know the other day I was reading about shit online when I was actually supposed to be doing this thing for Brad - code and shit though what I really like is electrical engineering and I don't know how but I just remembered those cookies the other day that you made with that icing, royal icing or some shit like that, right? Yeah," Ray went on without waiting for confirmation, "And I googled that because, hey, why the fuck is it "royal" anyway, I'm a fucking Republican, and then I found this website with all these recipes and, dude, no wonder you want to be a baker if you get to make shit like that for a living and hey, I saw this recipe where you eat fucking tiramisu for breakfast, and I was so on the board with that until I figured it didn't actually involve any alcohol, I was so fucking betrayed, like Lando and Han Solo, except without the carbon casing and more being utterly wronged by the Internet. Though it did have coffee I guess. Kinda gay to eat tiramisu and shit like that for breakfast, though, you gotta get up like hours earlier to make that shit, when seriously all you need is cornflakes and five minutes, especially when you can get cookie crisps and coffee milk, which -"

"Ray," Walt said softly, as they turned a corner and Ray paused to take a breath.

Ray stopped in his tracks and said, "You know, that is maybe the third time I've heard you say that. My name."

Walt smiled faintly. "Brad does say we're completely ridiculous."

"Yeah, well," Ray huffed and rolled his eyes, "It's not like he was any better with Nate."

"No, I suppose not," Walt said, smiling, and reached out to take Ray's hand.

Ray looked down at where Walt had slid his gloved fingers in between Ray's, which were quite frankly freezing, and looked back up at Walt, whose eyes were anxious and the most gorgeous blue.

"Hi," Ray said very seriously, and tugged Walt close.

Walt's lips were chapped and dry, and also plush and yielding and curving up against his as they fit their mouths together in a kiss that said _'hello, you'_ and _'I've been waiting for so long'_ ; Ray tasted apricot and whiskey and icing sugar as he licked his way into Walt's mouth, warm and wet and Walt's tongue sliding in welcome against his, curious and exploring and glad. It seemed like ages as they stood there, hands clasped together and just kissing in the cold, two lovers in a quiet street in the winter.

"You make a very compelling argument to stay," Ray said breathlessly. Walt grinned at him, mischievous and open and looking so happy and beautiful and unexpected that Ray just had to kiss him again, try to breathe him in and make up for all that goddamn lost time.

They parted, eventually, because hunger waits for no man and Ray's stomach growled in the middle of another particularly passionate exchange. Walt laughed, his body trembling in mirth under Ray's hands, his breath warm against Ray's cheek.

"Food, yes?" Walt said, light and easy. "Just down the street."

Ray beamed at him and nosed along his cheek, said, "Yeah, okay."

 

///

 

"Don't worry, Walt," Ray said seriously, though his eyes danced with laughter, "We'll always have Paris. Better known as my flat."

Walt laughed and kissed him, in front of Nate and Brad and the two incredibly sleepy security officers manning the Departure Gate.

"I'm not sure I needed to know that, Ray," said Nate cheerfully.

"Payback, Nate," said Ray equally cheerily.

Brad looked vaguely constipated as he clapped Ray on the shoulder and quipped, "Stay frosty."

Rolling his eyes, Ray said, "Brad, for what I hope is the last time, that is _so lame_."

Just as a tussle was about to break out before the departure gate (if a tussle it could be called, seeing as Brad was about twice the size of Ray), Nate smiled benevolently at them all, pulled Brad back by the elbow, and said, "Break it up before Homeland Security destroys Ray's chances of winning the Nobel Prize for Physics, guys," before guiding Brad a respectable distance away.

Dusting himself off ostentatiously, Ray turned back to Walt and - "Oh, Jesus Christ, Walt," he said, alarmed, half buried under Walt engulfing him in a bear hug. "Hey, hey, don't cry, you'll make me cry too," he hurried on when Walt rather redundantly muffled a sniff in his shoulder.

"I'm not crying," Walt said, and lifted his head up to glare, all wobbly and red-eyed, at Ray.

"Okay," said Ray, ignoring the fact he was probably clutching Walt just as tight. "Any last words?"

"Try not to get drunk," Walt sighed, "And come back soon."

 


	2. Omakes

////

 

AND NOW, JAPANESE STYLE!

OMAKE #1:

([](http://users.livejournal.com/__sine/profile)[ **__sine**](http://users.livejournal.com/__sine/) : (can you imagine ray telling some poor kid on the plane all about his woes)  
the person sitting next to him: T_T )

Ray fidgeted, flipped through every single in-flight magazine, scanned through all the radio and TV channels, fiddled with his seat-belt, before flopping back into his seat with a deep, deep sigh.

The kid sitting next to him had been giving him odd looks throughout the process, and at the conclusion of Ray's performance took his headphones off and said, "Wassup?"

Turning to the kid, Ray gave him a deeply sorrowful look and said, "Dude, let me tell you a story."

...

OMAKE #2:

It was a sign of just how much the world loved him, Ray thought, that the sun should finally choose to show her totally glorious, majestic face after a week of steady pissing, grey and dreary and completely fucked up, on the day that Walt was arriving in Merry Olde England.

"It's so _beautiful_ ," Walt breathed as he stared up around him, wide-eyed with wonder, and Ray bit his tongue on a very colourful description of exactly how unbeautiful England normally was, because the look of awe and delight on Walt's face was something he'd almost physically _ached_ for in the past ten weeks, almost more than the feel of Walt solid under his fingers and yielding against his tongue.

"Yeah, well," smirked Ray, "Wait till you see Wales."

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> the exchange programme with Cambridge used as a plot device here doesn't actually exist, to my knowledge.


End file.
